Tattletech Hot Seat with Helen Brown, CatWalk Genius

Right. So some say that there aren’t enough female entrepreneurs out there. We say who cares, and it isn’t about volume (and yes gentleman, size does count), maybe females just want to create the perfect sustainable business so aren’t really into just hurling every cotton candy, augmented reality, turn magic beans into beanstalk scheme into the start up community. Which is why when we heard Helen Brown, Founder of Cat Walk Genius, present at the TechCrunch Christmas Crunch par-tay in London last year, we stopped and listened. Fashion. Check. Business model. Check. Helping others become entrepreneurs via grass roots micro investment. Check. 

Tattletech: Your site CatWalk Genius strikes us as, well, genius!  Are you now or have you in the past been a fashion designer?  What was your inspiration for this venture?

Helen Brown: I don’t have a fashion background at all, no. I studied Psychology at university and then spent a career in financial services management – so I’ve always had an interest in consumer behavior.

As the internet started enabling much more interaction between people and brands, I knew I wanted to do something that got a traditional sector to be more engaging. Fashion turned out to hold the most opportunities for that, so Catwalk Genius was the result.

TT:  The designers you promote do have some great clothes, but nothing for men.  Do you see this as an area for expansion, or is men’s fashion too niche to bother with right now.

HB: Men’s fashion is huge, but it takes a lot of focused effort to get enough quality brands involved to make it worthwhile. It made sense to stick to the larger womens’ market in the early days, but we’ve definitely got boys in mind for the future.
TT: You must have had some great designers who bootstrapped themselves using your site.  Tell us one of the best designer success stories, rags to riches and all that.

HB: We’re only now bringing the ‘crowd-funding’ aspect to the forefront of what we do, so we’ve still yet to have a designer hit the funding target. We’re planning to run our first full funding trial in the next few months, so let’s talk again in the summer!

TT: From an entrepreneurial viewpoint you look pretty successful – the company is owned by IQL Ltd in Dublin.  Did you approach them or vice versa?  Have any of them shopped on the site?

HB: IQL Ltd is us – all the directors were in Ireland a few years ago so it made sense to incorporate over there. We’re just in the process of setting up in the UK now, which will make it a bit easier to get to London Fashion Week!

TT: I won’t ask you to name names from the designers that you support, but in the “mainstream” world of catwalk fashion, what are some of your favorite old school design houses?

HB: I think I always appreciated the loveliness of the old classics like Chanel and Balmain, but my speed-education in fashion has seen me tickled by the likes of Hussein Chalayan, Gareth Pugh and Christopher Kane.

TT: The concept of crowd funding, along with crowd sourcing, independent/micro debt financing, etc., is a “channel” of the internet that is exploding with new interactive ideas. Do you see any hint of “community” on the web, or is it already too big for that – will personal interaction on the web be a thing of the past.

HB: I don’t think size limits the community possibilities – I expect there’ll be many smaller communities formed around niche interests rather than a few large ones.

It’s human nature to seek out personal interaction so I don’t see an end to that happening any time soon – but it’s up to tech companies to provide the kind of platforms that will facilitate meaningful exchanges about interesting content. If anything, I think the future will see more and more people coming together to pool their resources and create fascinating stuff. -- JLH

Related articles by Zemanta

• TechCrunch Xmas: Women are Pitching their Companies more and more! (thenextwomen.com)

Tags: Catwalk Genius, Catwalkgenius, Crowd sourcing, Entrepreneur, Fashion design, London, micro investments, TechCrunch